It is often necessary for airline travellers to change airplanes at an intermediate airport. At the airport, a baggage handling group unloads the baggage from the incoming flight and transfers it to one or more departing flights so that each piece of luggage will arrive at the same destination as its owner. This operation is frequently complicated by the fact that there may be several flights with different departure times that connect with a particular incoming flight. In situations where the connecting flights are already being "made up" when the incoming flight arrives, the bags can usually be transferred directly to the connecting flights. However, when a connecting flight is not yet being made up, the bags designated for that flight must be stored until the make-up of the flight is "opened." Such bags are called "early bags".
Typically, the make-up for a flight is opened about two hours prior to the scheduled departure time of the flight. Thus, a bag arriving at the airport more than two hours prior to the scheduled departure time of its designated connecting flight is an early bag. Larger airports may require storage of up to 4000 early bags. Such bags can be from one-half hour to 24 hours early.
Presently, one preferred method for storing early bags is to load the bags onto carts. The carts are then placed in a storage area until a make-up is opened. After the make-up is opened, the bags are removed from the carts and placed on the airport's baggage conveyor system. However, systems of this type are very labor-intensive and inefficient.
Another known method is to provide the conveyor system with storage lanes for early bags. In this type of system, early bags for flights having make-up times within a certain time period can be loaded into the storage lanes. The bags are then discharged into the conveyor system when it is time for their respective flights to be made-up. However, systems of this type suffer from the disadvantage that the opening times of flights frequently change. When changes occur, all of the bags originally arranged to be discharged into the conveyor system at a particular time must be physically retrieved and reordered. In addition, a passenger may change his travel plans and request that his bag be provided to him. This requires a worker to physically search the storage lane for the bag and retrieve it for the passenger.